Friday, 19 September 2014

I met this spider while upturning a garden chair. She walked steadily on the ground, and blankly refused to settle on the white bowl. She jumped a few times like a jumping spider! I had to take the photos while she settled briefly on my plastic pot on top of the while bowl. The is a relatively large sac spider, Clubiona sp. (possibly reclusa), around 9 mm long, with very dark chelicerae. Females a silk cell in a folded leaf containing their egg sac

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

I enticed some blue lace web spiders, Amaurobius similis, out of their retreats gently spraying their webs with water. They are shy spiders and might swiftly come inside when realising it is not prey, but some stay out long enough. The one above was one of several in ivy, where I find they are quite common. She looks lovely, both powerful and fresh. The one below, a much darker individual lives on the corner of my fence. Both are mature females, the size of a honeybee.

At this time of year it is hard not to notice Araneus diadematus, the garden spider. You walk through their orb webs when walking on paths with many hanging by each other by the dozens in front gardens. Most of the individuals you see on their webs now are females. Males have reached maturity and forgot about feeding: mating is the only thing in their mind, so they move across stealthily, in search of just mature fertile females. Many of the females are now just growing their eggs, fattening up, feeding on the many insects still flying in the mild september. The one above got a Hawthorn Shieldbug and rapidly rolled it up with silk, biting it repeatedly. The stink of the bug seems not to bother the spider. It was a dry afternoon, so the tiny dropplets visible on the silk threads on the bottom-left corner of the photo are probably the glue what makes the web sticky.
I have been photographing garden spiders in the last few days. They are an easy subject. You can find the same individuals day after day in the same spot and you can get very close without disturbing them.

I tried a white background with this one, placing a white card behind the spider outside.

Sunday, 14 September 2014

I find maternal behaviour of spiders fascinating, and I keep an eye for it whenever the opportunity arises. When repotting my gingko bonsai on the 2nd of September, I noticed a couple of rolled leaves. They contained web shelters of Candy Striped Spiders Enoplognatha ovata/latimana. One of them had a female with her egg sac, the other already contained spiderlings (above). I checked today again, both females were guarding their spiderlings. The first one approached the entrance of her leaf to check what was causing the disturbance, the spiderlings clustering together like Araneus spiderling balls. The spiderlings have been in one of the nests for almost two weeks. Will the presence of their mother increase their chances of survival? will the mother feed during this time? In the related genus Theridion (Enoplognatha ovata was previoulsy called Theridion ovatum) the presence of the mother guarding the egg sac appears necessary for egg survival (although there were some loses due to parasitism from a tiny wasp). The mother not only sits near the egg sac, attached to her by a silk thread, but she is on the alert, and will move the egg sac to the centre of the web when predators are nearby. Unguarded egg sacs are rapidly predated by insects (ants, earwigs) and other spiders. And what about the spiderlings? what do they have to gain from their mother's care? In the Happy Face Spider, Theridion grallator, the female loosens the egg sac allowing the emergence of the spiderlings, and then captures prey for her brood. The spiderlings are under the female care up to three months, until they disperse and feed on their own. The female might produce another egg sac if the first one is lost, but she will die by the end of September early October. The spiderlings will disperse and overwinter near the ground.

Friday, 12 September 2014

Some posts take a long time to come out. This one in particular has been on the shelf for a long time. The reason? I wasn't sure of the identity of the animal for a while. I found it under a stone on the 29th of September 2012. A small, shiny white long thing, looking like a piece of root, but then it moved! What on earth was it? I picked it up and placed it on the white bowl, where its paleness didn't contrast as brutally with the background. A very stretchy animal, with no rings or setae: cannot be a nematode or an annelid... a flatworm? I got excited, a land flatworm, wow!, I didn't know we got these in gardens. Then I thought, wait a minute, isn't there an invasive land flatworm? I researched the topic. Yes, there are three species of native British land planarians...and at the turn of the XXI century 10 introduced species. After some inquiries it turned up mine was probably one of the native species, Microplana scharffi. Thank you to Christian Owen in iSpot who identified it for me.

While visiting a farm in the Peak District, we stumbled with this awesome mini beast: a fully grown Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillar. I had been wanting to see this caterpillar for a long time. Knowing that they like willowherbs I had often look for them when I saw a drift of rosebay willowherb. But not this time, somehow, its dark colour made it stand up against the green foliage. She was hanging upside down from the underside of a rosebay willowherb leaf, on a plant growing by a hedge.
While handling it it adopted all the postures this caterpillar is known for, suggesting either an elephant, when the caterpillar is fully extended, or a snake, when the caterpillar is disturbed and it raises its front, while retracting its head.
A 'snake' resemblance is a recurrent theme in various large caterpillars from several families, and it has been suggested that this way the caterpillars gain protention from birds, wary of snakes, which are startled when the caterpillar moves its head and the eyes are exposed on the thickened anterior end.
A Canadian team formed by Thomas Hossie and Thomas Sherrat carried out an interesting set of experiments using pastry caterpillars, which they exposed to natural predation by placing them in branches in the wild. They used pastry caterpillars coloured with food dye with or without eyespots with or without defensive posture ('snake') and with or without countershading.Their results suggested that the presence of eyespots and the raised position might deter birds from eating the caterpillars and countershading and the position of the eyespots in the thickened anterior end has a protective effect too. But don't rely on me telling you, as you can read it from Hossie's himself in his blog Caterpillar Eyespots.

About BugBlog

You don't have to travel far to marvel about the natural world. Extraordinary animals with fascinating behaviours live around us in our homes, gardens and cities. This blog is a venue in which I showcase research or curious facts or observations on insects and other invertebrates I come across, mostly in and around my garden in the UK.

About Me

I am a biologist interested in Evolution, Behaviour and Ecology based in Hull (U.K.). I like to use photography to document animal behaviour. I have been hooked on Natural History since I was a kid. My research focus on invertebrates, especially those dispersing passively, and have included rotifers, Artemia and tadpole shrimp (Triops). I also have an obsessive interest of all topics related to human evolution and apes and I am a birdwatcher.

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All photographs and text in Bugblog unless otherwise stated are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. You are welcome to use them for private, educational or other non-commercial use, provided you acknowledge their source (a link to Bugblog or my name will do). Although not necessary, I appreciate if you let me know you are going to use them.